[Reproduce-devel] [task #15392] Cleaner distribution tarball for arXiv (LaTeX package source)

[Mohammad Akhlaghi]

URL:
  <https://savannah.nongnu.org/task/?15392>

                 Summary: Cleaner distribution tarball for arXiv (LaTeX
package source)
                 Project: Reproducible paper template
            Submitted by: makhlaghi
            Submitted on: Mon 16 Sep 2019 01:22:23 AM BST
         Should Start On: Mon 16 Sep 2019 12:00:00 AM BST
   Should be Finished on: Mon 16 Sep 2019 12:00:00 AM BST
                Category: Analysis
                Priority: 5 - Normal
                  Status: Postponed
                 Privacy: Public
        Percent Complete: 0%
             Assigned to: None
             Open/Closed: Open
         Discussion Lock: Any
                  Effort: 0.00

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Details:

With the following command, a distribution-ready tarball is created that is
ready to be uploaded to servers like arXiv for the publication of the paper.


./project make dist


But differing LaTeX package versions (between the project and server's running
LaTeX) can cause problems while building the project's PDF on such servers. 

One special case that immediately caused problems in building the template
output on arXiv was BibLaTeX. arXiv won't run Biber (to create the necessary
`.bbl' file), so we need to put the `.bbl' file in the distribution tarball.
But the creator and reader of the `.bbl' file have to have the same version,
so arXiv would crash on reading the `.bbl' file. 

To solve such problems currently, when building the distribution tarball, the
whole BibLaTeX source is copied into the top-level directory tarball. This
fixes the problem and arXiv builds the PDF successfully.

But this isn't an elegant way and puts many extra files in the top-level
distribution tarball. I don't know if LaTeX has a special kind of startup
file, or environment variable, or a special macro in the preamble, that can
allow us to put the LaTeX package source files in a sub-directory. It would be
good if we can find such a solution and put a copy of all the high-level
(non-binary) LaTeX packages sources that are used in the project (and cited in
the paper) in the distribution tarball. 




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